


I Wonder as We Wander

by EbonyAura



Series: MEGOP WEEK 2020 [1]
Category: Transformers: Prime
Genre: #megopweek2020, Angst, Character Death, Developing Relationship, HAPPY MEGOP WEEK, M/M, Post-War, Pre-War, this just goes with the canon sorry, unicron gave megatron ptsd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-01-05
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:01:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21994900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EbonyAura/pseuds/EbonyAura
Summary: HAPPY MEGOP WEEK!Day 1: Pre-War & Post WarMegatronus ponders Orion after their first meeting.Megatron laments Orion after Optimus Prime's sacrifice.
Relationships: Megatron/Optimus Prime
Series: MEGOP WEEK 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1583281
Comments: 2
Kudos: 27
Collections: MegOP Week 2020





	I Wonder as We Wander

**Author's Note:**

> Somebody said it was MEGOP WEEK so here have some sad stuff
> 
> There will be lots more to come in the next week!

Pre-War  
  
The sky was dim, absent of the brightness of Cybertron’s closest star. Industrial smog that hung low over Kaon blocked out any other light from space illuminating their end of the galaxy. Though it engulfed the atmosphere above, flickering streetlamps held back the fog’s advance to the surface; the light not powerful enough to show the filth of the pathways, but able to expose bots who slunk around at this time of night.  
  
Blue optics skimmed over the view of it all from a murky window. They should’ve been devoid of energy by now, all of it stolen by the cycle’s grueling matches. But Megatronus’s frame felt an unshakeable jitter, his spark flaring and spinning in its casing without his consent. Weary limb struts were fueled by a strange adrenaline he hadn’t known before, forbidding him from a sound recharge and prickling his exasperation.  
  
Hovering at the front of his processor, there was a pair of cerulean optics that wouldn’t leave him alone. They shined like the aura of a deity, pulling at his attention and eliciting awe from his hardened spark. He’d never seen anything like them in Kaon, nothing so beautiful and pure in this place tainted by sin and debauchery, murder and slavery. They didn’t belong there. Orion didn’t belong there, and the gladiator was so sure of his own place in this city that he felt unworthy of beholding the mech from the moment they met.  
  
He could recount each nanosecond of their encounter, if asked, even note the point when their optics had met, and his spark had ceased pulsing. How confusing it had been to meet the gaze of a bot who wore no battle armor. Whose peds did not shake the ground as he walked. Whose gentle EM field reached out to him without fear or hesitation.  
  
The gladiator’s lip plates thinned, and Megatronus pulled his gaze away from the window to look down at his sharpened digits. Their silver sheen was obscured by the grime of surface minerals and dried energon. The marks of the arena. Orion had to have seen it. There was no way he couldn’t have noticed how the gladiator towered over the Kaoni populace, molded into a creature of spikes, fangs, and claws. Surely, he’d noticed the latest opponent’s energon that dripped off his servos, the scrapes and scars that littered his frame.  
  
After another moment, his servos fell to his sides. There was no point looking for some sudden and miraculous transformation that would seem more likely to have drawn the attention of the archivist. He’d observed Megatronus as exactly what he was: a pit-spawn, a slave, a monster. And he either had nerves of steel, or simply didn’t care.  
  
The latter possibility caused him to huff, some emotion between incredulousness and amusement coiling in his piping. Dust settled in his vents blew out into the dark room surrounding him. To stare down one’s death as Orion had without a care was nothing but stupidity. A lack of the basest of common sense. Who in their right mind would ever look at Megatronus as anything but their executioner?  
  
His gaze turned back the world outside the murky window.  
  
Those cerulean optics would. Those bright, all-encompassing, magnificent optics that fixed themselves permanently in his memory files would always look at him without fear. Beholding him as the mech he wished to be someday, not the monster the pits had molded him into.  
  
Megatronus felt his spark spin again, and his limbs twitch with another rush of the adrenaline. Perhaps that’s what he would always be. Or, perhaps those cerulean optics, gazing at him without a trace of hesitation, could be his path to becoming something more.  
  
Faced with the most improbable of dreams suddenly coming to life in the waking world, the gladiator’s lips curled up into a smile, and he thought of Orion long into the night.  
  
Post-War  
  
The stars were everywhere above him. Billions of them littered the expanse of the sky, clustered into constellations just out of his reach. None of them were near enough to warrant this rocky planet falling into orbit, casting it into eternal night. But they glowed just enough to depict the dry, craggy landscape before him, stretching into a horizon.  
  
To the gladiator he once was, this would’ve been a novel experience. He might’ve run as far as his peds could take him to try to touch the line between the surface and the sky, might’ve spun in dizzying circles with his helm turned upwards to try and take in as much as many of those points of light as he could. To the old warlord that lived now, it was simply another abandoned planet on the edge of the galaxy. Nothing but the energon deposits hidden deep in its caves gave him a reason to dwell here.  
  
Red optics scanned the ground of the narrow cave he’d take refuge in for the next few cycles, silently calculating before finding a somewhat flat area that expanded to his new frame length. Megatron withheld a sigh, trying not to think about his decently comfy berth aboard the Nemesis, and folded his bulky leg struts underneath him. His digits curled into the wall beside him, leaving grooves as he took care in easing himself down with an audible thump.  
  
His joints creaked as he settled back against the wall, lamenting the youthful gladiator whose limbs only hurt when wounded by an opponent. The ache was libeled to dissipate when he crashed into recharge all those eons ago. Now, it was always present. All of his pain receptors were constantly lit, bombarding him with the low-level throbbing of old war injuries, sudden frame upgrades, and Unicron’s torture.  
  
Without warning the chaos deity’s violet optics assaulted the forefront of his thoughts and his spark shuddered at the phantom sensation of dark energy electrifying his core. Megatron’s frame went rigid as he forced himself not to flinch, his chassis shaking with the effort. War taught him to never show weakness, and old habits die hard.  
  
In an effort to shake the god from his thoughts, he turned from the mouth of the cave to the inner tunnel. Within, the resonant glow of energon crystals pushed forth against the night. Their light blue shade reminded him of the minerals he’d mined for in the first few eons of his life, not the most pleasant memory he kept, but better than most. A klik passed before the memory files shifted, the blue of the crystals suddenly reminding him more of a pair of cerulean optics.  
  
They came to the forefront of his processor, their peaceful aura banishing Unicron’s hold, and Megatron’s frame went limp. He let himself slide down the wall to the ground, letting his helm fall back onto stone. Those optics, those damnably perfect optics. They were Orion’s greatest feature, so unique that they’d managed to live on in Optimus Prime. It hadn’t mattered that he didn’t remember who he was before their war. Those optics never ceased to shine above his wretched battle mask. Orion lived on in him. And perhaps if he’d realized it four million years earlier, the war would not have happened.  
  
Then again, perhaps not. Because what difference would it have made?  
  
There was no greater hatred than that which sprouted from their love. No greater betrayal in all of Cybertron’s history than Megatronus’s betrayal against Orion. To him, the archivist was the perpetrator. The archivist had stolen his chance for glory. What they’d shared together ended the nanosecond he stormed out of the Council hall, ravenous for spilt energon. What they had would never have been possible again, and to prove that fact he swept Cybertron to its knees.  
  
Survivors of his wrath could only hope there would never be any like this war again. But history was prone to repeat itself one way or another. The old warlord had learned early on in his life cycles that for a species which prided itself on being perfection incarnated, Cybertronians were remarkably volatile and primitive.  
  
There was goodness in them, however, goodness that he’d found existed in the optics of Orion Pax. Goodness that banished the cursed nightmares of a weary monster borne of the pits. Megatron held no illusions anymore. He knew what he was, and for all that he’d come to regret, he did not try to change it. Nothing could. Not even the bot he loved, who now existed as nothing more than a memory.  
  
The old warlord finally let go of the sigh his vents had been holding. Without Orion, without Optimus Prime, Megatron did not know what Cybertron would become. He’d never wanted to know a world without those cerulean optics, and now he lived that nightmare in the waking world. The war was over. The Decepticons had lost. Optimus Prime was gone. Orion Pax was gone.  
  
Throbbing pain encompassed his spark, this time that of loss instead of torture. Megatron closed his optics, letting the archivist’s memory engulf him, and thought of Orion long into the night.


End file.
